After some more digging, I realized it is not required for root to have no password; it just needs to *also* have privileges granted when identified via unix socket. I executed the following as the root user:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED VIA
unix_socket;
Startup and automatic upgrade proceeded normally after that.
I still believe the MariaDB installation should check and correct this.
Regards,
--
Matijs
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
